It’s been a brutal inaugural year in the Senate for Tom Cotton in the win-loss column: Within months of being sworn in, the next-generation leader of GOP hawks lost major showdowns over the Iran nuclear deal and government surveillance, two of his top causes.

“I don’t think it's a hard year for me,” Cotton (R-Ark.) said. “I think it’s a hard year for the American people and their national security.”

Story Continued Below

But Cotton now seems to be having a moment of redemption.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, the national security pendulum is swinging sharply back in his direction. The GOP presidential primary field is talking increasingly tough on foreign policy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to revisit the surveillance powers that Congress did away with over Cotton’s vocal opposition.

And Marco Rubio has seized the tough-on-defense lane that Cotton helped open earlier this year, hoping to ride criticisms of libertarian-leaning Republicans all the way to the White House.

Indeed, it's a good time to be a hawk in the Republican Party. And Cotton, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with a pair of degrees from Harvard, is the go-to messenger — whether it's thrashing the president's plans to close Guantánamo Bay or devising the next national security push on the Senate floor.

In an interview with POLITICO in the Capitol, Cotton said he’s optimistic about the party’s turn and said he has every intention of continuing to warn Americans about the dangers of the Iran deal and the need for bulk collection of phone records to root out terrorists. It's not just good policy, the 38-year-old lawmaker says: It's now good politics.

"We've now entered into a nuclear deal that's going to give the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism nuclear weapons ... we've deprived very patriotic intelligence officials of critical tools that would keep this country safe," Cotton said. "The American people recognize that."

The latest evidence of Cotton's rising influence is a McConnell-backed effort to overwrite major portions of the USA Freedom Act, a collection of intelligence reforms that most notably ended the bulk data collection program used by the National Security Agency. The law passed in June, but after terrorist attacks and calls to more easily obtain "metadata" culled from millions of phone calls, party leaders are strongly considering holding a divisive vote on Cotton’s legislation.

The move could be blocked by Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans, but it would allow Rubio to level fresh criticism at Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, both of whom opposed preserving existing bulk data collections programs.

Cotton insists he's not angling to help Rubio by teaming with him to litigate the NSA’s surveillance powers just six months after a revamp of the law. Cotton says simply that the new collection program relying on phone companies to store call data can’t be trusted when radicalized terrorists are attacking soft targets.

“Time is wasting right now trying to restore some of the capabilities that some of our intelligence professionals had and to make sure that we don't have this same kind of gap in the future,” Cotton said. “We should do it now to try and stop the attack.”

Revisiting the surveillance debate would reopen the divide between the interventionist and non-interventionist wings of the GOP. Twenty three Republican senators broke with Cotton this spring over reforming the PATRIOT Act, and they don't seem to have changed their minds.

"The truth is that the USA Freedom Act did nothing to weaken our response to San Bernarndino," said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a leading proponent of reining in the NSA's surveillance authority. “I have yet to hear an argument against it ... that I find persuasive or that I find consistent with the facts of what USA Freedom actually does."

Cruz, who's been under attack from Rubio and Jeb Bush over his vote to reform the PATRIOT Act, also shows no sign of budging.

“The USA Freedom Act strengthened our ability to target terrorists. That was the expert judgment of our intelligence agencies and what they told Congress,” Cruz said in an interview.

As for McConnell, the majority leader wouldn't commit to moving Cotton's bill on the floor next year, though aides said he wants to see it done.

“I do have concerns about how we’ve weakened national security. But obviously that’s an issue that divides our conference," McConnell said in an interview. "But we’ll just have to keep an eye on that."

And this week,former CIA Director Michael Hayden and Attorney General Michael Mukasey circulated letters to Senate and House leaders urging passage of the Cotton bill, asking for it to be attached to the must-pass spending bill.

Betraying a pragmatic side that was absent in the spring, Cotton's latest surveillance proposal doesn't go as far as his refusal earlier this year to countenance any changes to the PATRIOT Act. His plan would retain the bulk phone records for five years, boost the FBI's ability to obtain online financial transactions, and make permanent less controversial surveillance programs targeting "lone wolf" suspects and terrorists who change cellphones frequently.

The Arkansas senator is also clearly still irked by the Iran deal. In a move that was seen by many as a flagrant violation of protocol at the time but now looks quaint amid Donald Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, Cotton penned a letter to Iranian leaders warning that the nuclear agreement could be scuttled by the next president. Forty-six other Republican senators signed the March missive.

Later, Cotton was so disgusted with the framework of legislation to give Congress a say on the nuclear pact that he was the only senator to vote against it. The actual agreement was opposed by majorities in both chambers, but they lacked the votes to override a veto by President Barack Obama.

Despite that loss, Cotton said he’s still heartened by the strong opposition to the deal in Congress and among Americans as reflected in polling.

As for surveillance, Cotton and Republican leaders are holding out hope that the debate could turn out differently next time, given the hawkish direction of the GOP and remarks like this from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.): “I would go back to bulk collection of records.”

Cotton says he’s open to a deal to get back some of what he believes the intelligence community lost.

“I’m going to continue to work to try to gain the support of like-minded Democrats and Republicans alike and potentially address the concerns of those who might not sponsor the bill,” Cotton said. “I’d love to get Bernie Sanders support on my bill. I don't think that's going to happen, but I’d be happy to do so.”